SEOUL — North Korea’s latest rocket-engine test showed “meaningful” progress, South Korea said on Monday, while an analyst said it was a dangerous step toward the North’s goal of developing a rocket that could hit the United States.

The North’s KCNA news agency said on Sunday the engine would help North Korea achieve world-class satellite-launch capability, indicating a new type of rocket engine for an intercontinental ballistic missile.

The North’s announcement of a successful engine test came as U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was in Beijing at the end of his first visit to Asia for talks dominated by concern about North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

“Through this test, it is found that engine function has made meaningful progress but further analysis is needed for exact thrust and possible uses,” Lee Jin-woo, deputy spokesman for the South Korean defense ministry, told a regular briefing.

State-run North Korean media reported that leader Kim Jong Un had hailed the successful test of a new high-thrust engine at its rocket launch station as “a new birth” of its rocket industry.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the country’s Sohae launch site on Saturday, March 18, 2017

Lee said the test featured a main engine supported by four supplementary engines.

However, he did not elaborate on the progress the test showed the North had made, nor comment on whether the engine could be used for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), saying the South Korean military was conducting analysis.

U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters he held meetings on North Korea at the weekend at his Florida resort. While he did not refer specifically to the rocket-engine test, he said Kim Jong Un was “acting very, very badly”.

The North Korean leader called the test of a new rocket engine ‘a great event of historic significance’ for the country’s indigenous rocket industry, on Saturday, March 18, 2017

OMINOUS

A South Korean analyst said the test was an ominous development.

“This was a comprehensive test for the first-stage rocket for an ICBM, and that is why it was dangerous,” said Kim Dong-yub, an analyst at Seoul’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies.

“It appears that North Korea has worked out much of its development of the first-stage rocket booster.”

North Korea has conducted five nuclear tests and a series of missile launches in defiance of U.N. sanctions, and is believed by experts and government officials to be working to develop nuclear-warhead missiles that could reach the United States.

North Korean leader Kim said in January his country was close to test-launching an ICBM. That would put parts of the United States in range.

Last week, Tillerson issued the Trump administration’s starkest warning yet to North Korea, saying in Seoul that a military response would be “on the table” if it took action to threaten South Korean and U.S. forces.

The United States has long called on China to do more to rein in its ally, North Korea. China resents being pressed to do more, saying the problem is between North Korea and the United States, although it too objects to the North’s nuclear program.

No formal agreements were announced during Tillerson’s visit to China although the two sides said they would work together to try to make North Korea take “a different course”.

China has called for a dual-track approach on North Korea, urging it to suspend its tests and the United States and South Korea to suspend military exercises so both sides can return to talks.

Beijing has also been infuriated by the deployment of an advanced U.S. anti-missile system in South Korea, which it says will both harm China’s own security and do nothing to ease tensions.

China says the system’s powerful radar will extend into the country’s northeast and potentially track Chinese missile launches, and maybe even intercept them. Russia also opposes the system, for the same reasons.

(Reporting by Ju-min Park and Jack Kim; Editing by Robert Birsel and Paul Tait)

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“Korean People’s Army will reduce the bases of aggression and provocation to ashes”

US warships, soldiers and warplanes are carrying out military exercises alongside their allies in Seoul.

Nuclear-powered aircraft carrier the USS Carl Vinson arrived in the peninsula with its strike group of destroyers.

Drills are being carried out to test plans to “decapitate” the leadership in Pyongyang should nuclear tensions rise too high.

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NUCLEAR WAR: US forces are training in South Korea with forces from Seoul

In a statement, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said: “The Korean People’s Army will reduce the bases of aggression and provocation to ashes with its invincible Hwasong rockets tipped with nuclear warheads and reliably defend the security of the country and its people’s happiness in case the US and the South Korean puppet forces fire even a single bullet at the territory of the DPRK.”

North Korea has sparked international fury by launching four missiles into the Sea of Japan, not long after the alleged assassination of Kim’s brother Kim Jong-nam.

Kim Jong-un is believed have fired up an H-Bomb factory in North Korea in a bid to produce a nuclear weapon 14-times more powerful than their previous test.

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US fighter jets SCRAMBLED in South Korea as part of massive joint military exercise

Wednesday, 15th March 2017

Joint US and South Korean forces took part in a massive show of force in the Sea of Japan as Kim Jong-un threatened a ‘merciless strike’ on their enemies

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An F18 fighter jet takes off from the deck of US aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson. Reuters photo